This chapter provides a background of Aki Kaurismäki's cinema. Despite ridiculing cinema as commerce, Kaurismäki's films have adopted the very same elements of commercial cinema, with their B-movie ...
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This chapter provides a background of Aki Kaurismäki's cinema. Despite ridiculing cinema as commerce, Kaurismäki's films have adopted the very same elements of commercial cinema, with their B-movie look, sentimental themes and expressions, and many allusions to popular music and culture—which resonate with a notion of personal taste in authorship. Ariel (1988), Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994), and Kaurismäki's music-video shorts are pastiches including plenty of Hollywood cliché. Moreover, Kaurismäki's cinema provokes people to rethink the fundamental categories and binary oppositions that often structure popular and scholarly discussions of film authorship. In this way, his work is highly relevant to revisionist approaches to European cinema, the art film and auteur cinema, world cinema, and authorship.Less

The Auteur

Andrew Nestingen

Published in print: 2013-06-25

This chapter provides a background of Aki Kaurismäki's cinema. Despite ridiculing cinema as commerce, Kaurismäki's films have adopted the very same elements of commercial cinema, with their B-movie look, sentimental themes and expressions, and many allusions to popular music and culture—which resonate with a notion of personal taste in authorship. Ariel (1988), Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994), and Kaurismäki's music-video shorts are pastiches including plenty of Hollywood cliché. Moreover, Kaurismäki's cinema provokes people to rethink the fundamental categories and binary oppositions that often structure popular and scholarly discussions of film authorship. In this way, his work is highly relevant to revisionist approaches to European cinema, the art film and auteur cinema, world cinema, and authorship.

This introductory chapter provides a brief history of Aki Kaurismäki's career in film. Kaurismäki made his directorial debut in 1983 with an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. He ...
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This introductory chapter provides a brief history of Aki Kaurismäki's career in film. Kaurismäki made his directorial debut in 1983 with an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. He followed up at a prolific pace, writing, directing, editing, and producing four more shorts and six more features by the end of the 1980s. His third feature, Varjojaparatiisissa (Shadows in Paradise, 1986), was selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in the spring of 1987 as well as for the Toronto International Film Festival later in the year. Subsequent films were selected for prestigious festivals, and since 1992, all of Kaurismäki's features have screened at the Toronto, Berlin, or Cannes film festivals. Nominations and awards received for The Man Without a Past (2002) secured the director's status as a leading figure in contemporary auteur cinema.Less

‘Who the Hell are you?’ : Aki Kaurismäki’s Cinema

Andrew Nestingen

Published in print: 2013-06-25

This introductory chapter provides a brief history of Aki Kaurismäki's career in film. Kaurismäki made his directorial debut in 1983 with an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. He followed up at a prolific pace, writing, directing, editing, and producing four more shorts and six more features by the end of the 1980s. His third feature, Varjojaparatiisissa (Shadows in Paradise, 1986), was selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in the spring of 1987 as well as for the Toronto International Film Festival later in the year. Subsequent films were selected for prestigious festivals, and since 1992, all of Kaurismäki's features have screened at the Toronto, Berlin, or Cannes film festivals. Nominations and awards received for The Man Without a Past (2002) secured the director's status as a leading figure in contemporary auteur cinema.

Aki Kaurismäki is an enigma, an eminent auteur who claims his films are a joke. Since 1983, Kaurismäki has produced classically styled films filled with cinephilic references to film history. He has ...
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Aki Kaurismäki is an enigma, an eminent auteur who claims his films are a joke. Since 1983, Kaurismäki has produced classically styled films filled with cinephilic references to film history. He has earned an international art-house audience and many prizes, influencing such directors as Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson. Yet Kaurismäki is often depicted as the loneliest, most nostalgic of Finns (except when he promotes his films, makes political statements, and runs his many businesses). He is also depicted as a bohemian known for outlandish actions and statements. This book is a first English-language study of this eccentric director. Drawing on revisionist approaches to film authorship, the text links the filmmaker and his films to the stories and issues animating film aesthetics and history, nostalgia, late modernity, politics, commerce, film festivals, and national cinema.Less

The Cinema of Aki Kaurismäki : Contrarian Stories

Andrew Nestingen

Published in print: 2013-06-25

Aki Kaurismäki is an enigma, an eminent auteur who claims his films are a joke. Since 1983, Kaurismäki has produced classically styled films filled with cinephilic references to film history. He has earned an international art-house audience and many prizes, influencing such directors as Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson. Yet Kaurismäki is often depicted as the loneliest, most nostalgic of Finns (except when he promotes his films, makes political statements, and runs his many businesses). He is also depicted as a bohemian known for outlandish actions and statements. This book is a first English-language study of this eccentric director. Drawing on revisionist approaches to film authorship, the text links the filmmaker and his films to the stories and issues animating film aesthetics and history, nostalgia, late modernity, politics, commerce, film festivals, and national cinema.